Dog Ear - Jim Johnstone (Signal Editions/Vehicule Press)

I get the distinct feeling from Jim Johnstone's Dog Ear that in his world vision -- someone has to pay.

This is the dark end of a world out of balance, basic goodness is deeply suspect.

These poems are the loose tooth your tongue can neither solve or salve. You feel them like a bruise. They are part of your flesh and bone, but a tender, sore part.

These poems are Michael Corleone sentencing Freddo to perdition while the Corleone matriarch still breathes.

Temps Mort

Hell is empty. All the devils are here.

-William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Look for a vanishing

point in tooth

and claw, the arrow

that predicts

equal and opposite

circles of hell.

Hell is of this world,

the wind blown

level with rooftops

on New Arthur,

cells re-circulating

as if symmetry

justified existence--

beauty where

nothing beautiful

had been.

Behind my back the

hemisphere

begins again and I

question

whether I'm needed

to complete

this scene: an open-

ending plain,

body dissolving

where a dog-

fox circles its tail

until all that

has passed slows.

When time's

arrow repeats, its bow

empties

and the Devil walks

through.

...

These tight, taut poems are a bit like a nightmare you can't wake from. A grimace that could turn to a smile, if only you could wake.

So, why would I recommend it?

Just ask our crying intern at Today's book of poetry. Ask her why she loves the sad torture of Yukio Mishima, the painful kiss of Jean Genet. Not all beauty wears a smile.

Louis Dudek, in Love

Umbrella held aloft like paper pulled

from a pinata, we trace the limits

of Marie-Reine-du-Monde and bull

inside. Bad luck: the basilica chaste

save for the confetti of our entrance,

the incline of a room within a room

inked-in in happenstance. By chance,

we've stumbled on our Waterloo:

elderly parishioners lulled to sleep,

pews like broken fingers on a working

hand. I take yours now, know your grip,

the clots that bulge like latticework,

confine the prize of blood's ascent.

See here? Your skin grows lean. Exeunt.

...

Where we might expect, even want, a love poem for passion, or even passive release we get:

"elderly parishioners lulled to sleep,

pews like broken fingers on a working

hand,"

Johnstone is relentless with his dark lament, his "raw self-examinations" that encompass us all.

Drive

No one will find us in this city -- not your valentine,

not the line of dogs he's chained by the throat. My collar

blooms chin-high, is perfumed with lilac where you

finger buttons, parse leaves and hook a flush of green

to my breast. Tell me you're good. Tell me we'll

lend our touch to the nearest MG, drive south on a

sucker bet until we run dry in the desert. There are

others who've come uninvited, who've come to free

themselves from their skin, lose their grip

and trace in a mess of coins. Here's my loss -- fist

lodged in the maw of the first guest to speak, our

honour run aground. To stay we'll need to slap down

the pin that adorns your jacket, bet against a snail being

able to survive the edge of a straight razor. I've been

told that nothing can live to know such a lean blade.

When we drive land rises and we rise with it.

...

Jim Johnstone's breathless and forcefully consistent Dog Ear should be read early in the morning. Hopefully on a day that promises sunshine.

This dark beacon reminds us of our better nature, the dire abyss promised with its loss.

Not all poetry give us hope, the shape of reason is not always pretty. Johnstone paints like Brueghel The Elder, beautiful pandemonium when the harsh light of the human heart is fully revealed.

What a riveting read. What an ominous outlook.

Jim Johnstone

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Johnstone is the author of three previous books of poetry: The Velocity of Escape (2008),Patternicity (2010) and Sunday, the locusts (2011). He is the recipient of a CBC Literary Award, The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and Matrix Magazine’s LitPop Award. Currently he’s the Poetry Editor at Palimpsest Press, and an Associate Editor at Representative Poetry Online. He lives in Toronto.